What Price Israel

Description

The State of Israel exists. Zionism has ostensibly achieved its long- dreamt-of goal. What are the consequences of the creation of this new state in terms of the million displaced Arabs on Israel's border, in terms of Israel's own future and the future of Jews in other countries, in terms of America's policy in the Middle East? American Jewry has been divided into two camps as a result of the establishment of the State of Israel. The Zionists have applied political pressures and anti-Zionists charge that they have suppressed a frank and free discussion of the implications of the new Jewish homeland for all Jews. Alfred M. Lilienthal, an American of Jewish faith, explores in this book the political, religious, and moral problems posed by the creation of a state based on the theory of Jewish nationality. He reviews the background of Jewish religious tradition and its inherent conflicts with political Zionism. He takes issue with certain claims of Zionism as they affect him a.id his fellow Jews in this country. Mr. Lilienthal reports the long battle beginning with the launching of the Zionist movement in the middle of the lost century, through the Balfour Declaration to the partition of Palestine, a decision in which the U. S. and U.S.S.R. voted side by side. In a description of the last round that reached into the chancelleries of the world, he analyzes the threat of the so-called “Jewish vote,” the triumph of the White House over the State Department with the precipitate recognition of the State of Israel and the consequent repercussions in the Arab and Moslem world. He is acutely sensitive to the horrors of the persecutions which befell the Jews of Europe, but asserts there were other solutions for the uprooted and displaced, solutions more in keeping with universal Judaism and less fraught with danger both for the refugees and for the cause of the free world.